


Future

by AraniWrites



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, alcohol mention, blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 02:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraniWrites/pseuds/AraniWrites
Summary: A little story about the Human and Salarian NPC's in ME:3 who talk outside of Purgatory, where the girl sells her prized car to buy the boy new armor after he's injured in combat. This is just some ideas about their life together since I ship it hardcore. Enjoy!





	Future

**Author's Note:**

> These are the NPC's I'm writing about. I did not make the original video!
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJZeQKIWPnk&t=10s

They meet on his first trip to the Citadel; stationed for the first time, a rookie in service of the Union, a soldier searching for a name for himself. She’s a receptionist at their transit station, logging the passengers day in and out, a human working to make some small living in a booth in the corner. They start talking one morning when he loses his pass, and he misses two shuttles in favor of their conversation.

He finds her attentive, intelligent and conscientious. She finds him calm, funny and dedicated. They continue conversations over weeks at one time, snippets each day as he moves to his station each morning and comes home every night. After some months they go for drinks after work, and a friendship blossoms over free weekends and calls after hours. She likes to ask him about the space outside the Citadel, and he joins her at her favorite stores on the Citadel’s streets. It’s the kind of friendship you see from those who’d known each other since childhood, and while they could not claim such origins they do find comfort in the care they knew they’d always hold.

He has a promising future within the Union, she can tell. He’s in it for his people, not for himself; he knows regulation by heart and had top marks in his training. He’s certainly new, if his behavior is any mark— he’s brash, and proud, and longs for recognition. He tells boasting stories with glorifying details, volunteers to take point and keeps track of his kills. She worries for him, but rarely voices so. It’s endearing in a way, and she listens to each and every story.

She knows where she’s headed, and has no qualms about her choice. She doesn’t want glory, or fame, or fortune. All she wants is a shop somewhere, anywhere, to call her own. She’s a mechanic in her off-time, repairing cars and shuttles and generators. She saves each and every penny to buy her own car, and gushes about upgrades and paint jobs that he can’t help but enjoy. One day she gets her car and invites him to be the first to join her for a ride. Soon enough she’s upgraded everything from the engine to the tires to the stereo, paints it her favorite color, and eventually it lands her a job in a mechanic’s shop in the lower levels of the Citadel’s Wards. She never stops talking about her love of those cars, and he listens to every excited fact with a laugh and a smile.

He enjoys her company more than he’d enjoyed anyone’s before. They attract similar friends and hang out for games and dinners. Their friends note their blatant similarities, and joke about how well they function as a team. They try to push them together a few times until they realize their efforts are wasted; if either notice what they’re trying they’re certainly not showing it, and their friends soon opt for more subtle nudges and hope it just might work for them both.

Then the Reapers arrive on Earth.

He finds her distraught in her apartment, having not shown up for work or drinks that night. She’s shaking and crying and panicked at all. When he finally calms her down her tragedy is revealed; all her family lives on Earth, her mother and father, her three sisters and their farm. Grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, and with no contact she can’t tell if they’re alive or not. The picture on the wall he’d never paid much mind to suddenly makes sense, her family laughing together in happier sunlit times. He holds her through the night and lets her cry as much as she requires. She takes a week off work until she reconciles with herself, and he does whatever he needs to to help her through her pain. Not long after he loses contact with his Clan, and she holds him the same way he’d held her that night before. He soon learns his worst fears are realized; his clan has been wiped out, and he is all that remains. She visits him daily and gives him an anchor to hold.

He applies for a transfer to the front lines, off the Citadel in service of the Union. She volunteers at shelters set up for the refugees. They don’t get to see each other much through his tours abroad, but they talk as much as they can through encrypted texts and photographs. In the rare times he’s on the Citadel they catch up on what they’d missed, and find themselves drinking together more than they ever had before. He’s proud of his job, protecting the innocent from harm. The Reapers are a threat far too big to ignore, and he performs his duty faithfully through sunshine and storm.

She receives news one morning of his injury in combat, and rushes to see him in a little hospital on the wards. He assures her over and over again, a concussion is not so serious, it could have been far worse, but the reality sets in of how close she was to losing him, and she spends many night visiting him until they release him for recovery.

She likes him, always has, in a way she can’t describe. She’d never expected much, never felt the need to ask for more, but suddenly life seems too short and too fragile to ignore. She makes a decision, a way she can help, and says nothing until they meet again to get drinks with their closest friends before he’s gone.

“Something good has come out of all this. They sent me a set of Vohrtix armor. Man, someone in supply sure messed that one up!”

“Oh! I’ve heard those are pretty good.”

“It’s great! I’d only be safer inside a tank. It’s why Vohrtix gear costs more than I make in a year.”

He’s ecstatic about that armor, and is actually excited to try it out. She’s not sure how to feel about that, but asks him questions and smiles for him regardless. Finally he grins and stands in time to meet their friends.

“Anyhow, enough about my armor. Lets find the gang and celebrate while I’m still here. Where’d you park?”

“I… took rapid transit.”

“Come on, you have the fanciest ride on the Citadel, and I saw that new paint job.”

“I, uh— I sold it a couple of weeks ago.”

“What?!” The shock on his face forces her to look away. “But you loved that car!”

“I know…”

“You never shut up about that car!”

“I know.”

He puts the pieces together as she knew he would. The realization registers in portions, until he’s slack-jawed in shock, staring at her with wide, dark eyes.

“Did you say you sold your car a few weeks ago? Because… that’s about the time I got sent this new armor…”

“Hey! It’s late.” She smiles again, despite the embarrassment she surely displayed, “And I’m not letting my friend miss a night at Purgatory, right? You want to go in, or do you want to talk about my car some more?”

He stares at her a few moments longer until he finally relents, sighing and giving her the sincerest smile he’s ever given to anyone. “No, you’re right. Lets go in.” He takes her hand then, and notes the red appearing on her face, “And I’m buying you some goddamn drinks.”

He leads her inside and indeed buys her her favorite drink, and they lose themselves in the lights and the sounds and the crowds. Soon their friends join them, and they lift glasses to those they’d lost. A circle they realize might get broken in the war to come.

Her girlfriends pull her to the dance floor, heat mixed with drink and bass, swaying hips and sweat on her brow, surrounded by a sea of people who wish for nothing more than to wash the anxieties away. He watches her flow like water, only able to pull his gaze away for the briefest of moments before she captures him again. He finds himself not wanting to look away— she’s something of a torrent, yet calm as the still lake hidden away in the jungles of Sur’Kesh.

His friends note the distracted cloud over his eyes, prod and question with entertained grins, and he wonders if they know something he must not. But she looks over to their table, looks to _him_ , and for the briefest of moments the light reflects in her eyes like a fire untouched by the rain. He holds his breath as he clings to his glass, his only anchor to the world around him, adrift in open water with no hope of navigation, and for the first time in his life he wishes he could stop time on this exact moment, hold it there until the war came to an end. He commits that smile to memory and knows he’d do anything just to see it again.

Then the moment’s over, her eyes have moved to their friends on the floor, and the world returns to a crashing focus of flashing lights. He blames the drinks, he blames his lingering concussion, he blames the chaos of a world trying so hard to forget what was going on around them. He continues to drink and wonders, for just a moment, if he could ever believe his own fabrications.

The fragility of life soon become harder to ignore. One of their friends has already died, and others have enlisted to fight the oncoming storm. He knows he’ll soon be redeployed in the field somewhere new, and he finds it more difficult to bid her adieu. They spend more time together in those final days of peace, until finally his notice comes in and he knows he has to leave. She tries to see him off with a smile and good faith, but her eyes betray the pain he’ll leave in his wake. They have dinner at her place and try to ignore the voices in their minds, until finally he tries to leave for the night and finds he can’t make it through the threshold.

He stays with her instead and blurts out every thought in his mind. Every minute he’d stared and wondered, tried to imagine them as one. He detailed every fear and the longing he felt, how deeply he cared and how much he wished he could stay. She cries at his words and affirms them with her own; she cares for him too, and worries every moment he’s gone. They talk all through the night clearing up every concern, until finally he knows he needs to leave to deploy once more. She stops him at the door, pulls him down and holds him close, soft lips against his own in the only farewell she can offer. And he promises her one thing, a promise he knows he can’t keep: he’ll return to her when the war is done, and they’ll live together in peace.

He leaves the Citadel with a new sense of purpose, and never returns to the apartment he’d thought they could potentially call home.

Instead he’s on assignment until all fleets are sent to Earth. He’s assigned to a ground team and sent to Earth’s surface, just barely making it through the atmospheric defenses and landing in a city that he can’t even pronounce the name of. He and his squad spend months fighting through the landscape, seeing the true horror of the Reapers for the first jarring time. It was a sight he knew he would never shake, and simply did his best to survive in spite of it.

It’s on a cold, quiet day when his squad comes upon the little town she’d told him so much about. Born and raised in farm country; he’d once found it amusing how space dazzled her so. Now, though, now that he stands there and stares down a street of burned out homes and abandoned stores, amusement is the last word he would use. He remembered the wonder in her eyes when she talked about a holiday she loved, how strings of lights would frame the streets, how music and laughter would pour out of every window, how broad smiles would grace every face. Now there was silence, and the few lights that continued to flicker left a permanent scar on the barren trees and toppled lamp posts. There is no music, no laughter, no smiles. It is cold, and he is lost among the ghosts of a world shattered beyond recognition.

He finds her family home on the outskirts of town, flanked by farmland of craters and bodies. She’d shown him pictures many times, her as a young child swinging happily in the arms of her father, with her three sisters laughing and spraying them with hoses. The grass was green then, the trees in bloom, with healthy crops stretched far into the background. The scene is far different now; gray, empty, lifeless. The roof has caved in, a wall has been blown out to create a makeshift defensive position, and Reaper minions lay dead at the doorstep beside an old shotgun, long since abandoned, blood-soaked and rusting. He searches the house knowing he’ll find nothing, yet hoping to find something. Something, _anything_ , anything that might make her feel a little less alone. He finds nothing, not even bones, and can’t figure out whether he should be upset at finding nothing or relieved at finding nothing. Perhaps they’re still alive, he thinks to himself. Perhaps they made it where his own clan did not.

The next day he gets to read the names of the dead. Ninety percent of the town was gone, those who’d survived had long since fled, and even the Reapers had moved on. Soon a very familiar name pops up again and again— one, two, three, four— and his faint hopes of bringing good news home to her fade away into distant regret. Five, six, seven, eight. He tries to imagine that place once full of light and hope, yet cannot find it within himself to envision it.

Suddenly he realizes why the veterans cringe every time the rookies volunteer to take point, why there’s sadness in their eyes as they watch the scores being diligently kept, bets won and lost as their enemies fall beside their comrades. The talk of heroism and glory don’t interest them, and he understands now more than he ever anticipated he would.

He stops volunteering to take point. He stops participating in the dramatic boasting of battles past. He stops keeping track of his kills, and pretends not to notice the hunger for recognition in the eyes of the newest pawns waiting their turn to die. The dreams of glory and heroism become just that— dreams to be forgotten upon the dusty light of day. 

They hear of the conflict culminating in London, and though they cross the sea to reach the effort they are assigned far from the core. They fight hard anyway, clearing land for the people to flee, until finally explosions light up the sky. The explosions become a wave of energy, clearing every Reaper in its path. They stare as the Reapers fall all around them, until the cheers shake them out of their shock and the celebrations begin. The war was over, they realized with glee. They could go home to their loved ones. They could go home and finally sleep.

They soon learn the wave has done more that destroy the Reapers; it has destroyed everything they knew as well. Their technology, their shuttles, nothing can operate, useful only for scrap. Everything is broken, their Tools and their communicators, translators and datapads all destroyed— he can’t even understand some of his squadmates, speaking a language native to a Salarian colony far from his own. They soon realize the truth they must come to accept; they are stuck on Earth, with no way to return. He hopes she’s safe out there, safe on the Citadel. He hoped she’d live well. He hoped she’d find peace.

News of the Citadel crashing down upon the Earth’s surface rattles him to his very core. His squad drops everything and races to the scene as quick as more primitive Human technology can take them. Not her, not her, not her. He was supposed to be the one to die, he was supposed to ensure she lived her life long and well. Not her, not her, _not her_. 

He searches every day, never stopping or slowing, only resting when his Commander forcibly pulls him away from the thousands of miles of wreckage. The emotions come in waves; they pull out many survivors, people of all kinds and walks of life, those fortunate enough to reach shelters and lucky enough to survive their injuries. With each living soul he finds it in him to hope just a little more, hope that perhaps she’s really somewhere in the rubble waiting for him to find her. Yet each day they pull out many more dead, twisted and charred— they usually only find pieces, not the whole, never the whole. He hopes, hopes without reserve, that her end was not so painful; that her end was swift and painless.

Weeks pass by as survivors sift through the ruins of the once beautiful crowned jewel. Soldiers, civilians, people flood in from all ports of entry, all races imaginable, all there to search for those who can be saved. And night after night, when the stars rise high in the sky and all others try to catch some dismal amount of sleep, he stands in front of a dimly list wall, projecting the names of those who were in recovery across the field hospitals set up all around the crash site. The translators no longer work, thus their names are illegible, so each name includes a picture of their faces. It’s a long line of projections, updated on the hour. Boards for the living, for the missing, and for the dead. He stands there for hours, days at a time, searching for her name on any of the boards. He sees a few of their friends on the list of those who’d died, the rest remain missing and never leave that limbo. For weeks her name and face remain unmoving on the missing persons list, unconfirmed through either facial recognition or DNA matches. He checks back diligently over and over, eyes heavy with lack of sleep, the letters of her name burned into his mind even if he’s unable to understand the symbols. He’s not sure he can handle either result; all he knows is he can’t stand to see her remain on the missing persons board. Part of him wonders if that’s where she’ll always be, perpetually stuck among a long list of others no different, those who wait and wait and are still never put to rest. He wants to see her, even if there’s only a little left. Something to bury, something to mourn. Or, he hopes, someone to hold— someone to love and never leave again.

Finally, after weeks of waiting, her name disappears from the missing persons board. At first, he can’t react. One moment it’s there, the next it’s gone, and he’s frozen in shock and disbelief. Then he frantically searches the other boards, peering over crowds of those searching for their loved ones. He looks through the list of dead first, the logical place her face would end up after so much time. But her name isn’t there, even after he scans it three more times, and with a dawning realization he understands her name must be on the only remaining list they have.

He pushes his way through the crowds and begins to look through faces and names on the list of survivors, and their locations. Not her, not her, not her, no face is familiar as he scans and scans, moving down the line for well over an hour. Then, as if the gods had pulled apart the clouds to reveal the sunlight, he sees her face among the survivors and breaths the first breath he’s breathed since the moment he’d seen Earth’s burning surface. She’s listed under a field hospital two-hundred miles away, but the distance doesn’t matter. He grabs all his belongings and hops into the back of a truck, beginning to make his way from hospital to hospital, hoping she’s still there, hoping he’s allowed to see her. Hope, hope, hope; finally, he can hope.

He comes across the field hospital, a little larger than many he’d passed through. It’s filled far beyond its capacity, people sitting along every wall and within every room. Crying, screaming, laughing, silent. Translators are useless, so groups bunch together in attempts to learn each other’s languages, easy ways to pass the time. Many more lay alone, unable to reach family that may or may not have survived. Many look out the windows and come to the realization on their own time; shuttles are inoperable, there’s no signals from anyone anywhere else in the galaxy. Earth is home now, a strange world with strange people, and they won’t be able to leave any time soon. He moves through the crowd with as little disturbance as possible, searching every room until he happens to stumble across a Salarian civilian who’s able to understand his native tongue. He directs him to the back of the hospital— it’s quieter here, the rooms reserved for those more seriously injured, those requiring the most care. He searches each room until finally, as if suspended in some god’s sunbeam, she’s there staring back at him.

Her room is small and quiet with only one other occupant, one currently in a comatose state. The room itself has seen better days; there’s a giant hole in the wall, covered by a tarp which flapped loosely in the wind, taking up the majority of the available space. She’s worse for wear, with nurses on either side of her. Her hair’s been shaved off and replaced with bandages, her arm and legs are broken, her left side is badly burned and she’s as pale as a ghost. But she sees him standing in the doorway— a soldier still in his battered armor, the armor she gave him, one who should be so composed and strong, is instead stunned and silent as tears streamed down his face— and she smiles for him. Him, and no one else. Her arms reach out to him, and he can’t get to her fast enough, nearly rebreaking her arm in his haste to hold her again. The nurses leave them respectfully as they melt into laughter and tears, finally together again— this time, for good.

They can’t understand each other, but that’s of no consequence. They would find another way, as they always would. As she recovers they set about learning to speak each other’s languages, communicating in between with pictures and looks that require no explaining. When her arm recovers she begins building translators for the hospital staff out of scrap from the Citadel, parts and pieces collected as she needs them. It’s crude, far from perfect, but the translators work well enough for the staff and occupants to manage. Much of the time he simply lays there and holds her while she sleeps, knowing beyond doubt that she— that _they_ — would recover. Suddenly, his future does not seem so lonely and bland. The future is a bright one, one of rebirth and rebuilding. He sees it as she recovers, as her hair regrows and her color returns, as she begins learning to walk again and as the burns fade into hardly noticeable scars. He’s there for it all, every breath and step. He picks up her language faster than she can learn his, and though he’s by no means fluent they pass along their translator to another patient and talk about anything and everything. They talk of the future, their future, and what it would look like. He’s only once called by his Commander to return to duty; he sends a letter of resignation instead, and he never hears from his squad again.

The land begins to heal beyond that blue tarp, and indeed around the world. People heal, too, as the world rebuilds. Cities rebuild, towns and suburbs, transportation and trade; society bounces back. After a long road she finally recovers, and they leave that hospital hand-in-hand. They’d talked about it many times, but now it was happening; their first real steps in a life together, with one destination in mind. He takes her back down the long road home, one of bumpy truck rides and a few crowded trains, a boat across the sea and a lot of walking in between. Finally they make it, a town she knows by heart. 

Weeds with flowers grow between the cracks in the streets, inside old cars and burnt out buildings. Grasses and trees have already begun reclaiming the land and everything that fell there, living or not. She points out shops she’d once visited, a park she used to play in, a tilted ferris wheel that still spun ominously in the wind, squeaking like people still laughed and played throughout the desolate landscape. They reach the outskirts of town to a home she knows well. The Reapers were picked up long ago, collected by volunteers along with any remains they could find. Only the shotgun remained, still guarding the once beautiful home. A tree has started to sprout between the floorboards in the kitchen, surrounded by wildflowers and vines that creep up the walls. She stands in the center, at the base of once elegant stairs, as though she too has rooted there, a tree not bowing to the wind. Then his arm is around her, and she cries for all that was lost. Cries for those futures ended, but also for those just beginning.

They rebuild her old home, as well as she can remember it. She cries a lot in the first days, and he cries along with her. They work in between, rebuilding the roof and the rooms it had crushed, removing the weeds and planting a garden just down the back porch steps. She teaches herself to sew and builds them tools to utilize, rebuilding generators and solar panels in the half-burned out shed. He tends to the garden, gathers any good scrap from the surrounding landscape they can use, and creates a line of gravestones whenever they have the time. It’s not perfect, but it’s quiet and secure— a life they never knew they wanted, but a life they now got to hold. 

As time goes on more people arrive, searching for the quiet or a new sense of home. People of all planets and kinds and lives, who set about rebuilding that little town side by side. They expand the garden into a farm for them all, and soon feed the entire population through sunshine and storm. And they heal, in time, like the trees and the ground and the wounds. She sings into broomsticks and dances down the halls, he cracks stupid jokes and rebuilds homes for those who need them most. They adopt three children, those orphaned by the war, and feed many more in that little town they call home. And finally, finally, they can rest without doubts.

Their future is now, and they embrace each day knowing they have earned their right to stay.


End file.
